"Three Standards of Unitarian Teaching" [1895] by Kanda Saichirō & "Record of Religious Lectures" [1895] by Saji Jitsunen
 |
| Unity Hall, Tokyo |
In connection with my passion for and commitment to the thought of the Japanese Unitarian and advocate of free-religion, Imaoka Shin’ichirō (1881-1988), I have developed an interest in the early history of the Japanese Unitarian movement. If you find yourself intrigued to find out more about that history then there are really only two books in English to which you can turn.
First, there is Michel Mohr’s fascinating “Buddhism, Unitarianism, and the Meiji Competition for Universality” (University of California Press, 2020).
Second, concentrating more upon Imaoka Shin’ichirō, there is George M. Williams’ equally fascinating “Cosmic Sage: Imaoka Shin’ichirō, Prophet of Free Religion” (Uniquest Publishing, 2019).
If you want to read a selection of Imaoka Shin’ichirō’s essays about free-religion and other subjects in English translation then please click on the following link:
Selected Essays by Imaoka Shin’ichiro [今岡信一良]
Anyway, two of the key early figures in the Japanese Unitarian movement were Kanda Saichirō [神田佐一郎] and Saji Jitsunen [佐治實然演說] who came to epitomise an important split that developed in the movement in the 1890s between the Christian Unitarians (who, broadly, followed Kanda Saichirō’s position), and the Buddhist Unitarians (who, broadly, followed Saji Jitsunen’s position).
A key aspect of this split was around the question of Universality — the centre of gravity of Mohr’s book. Mohr points out that from the beginning of the American Unitarian Association’s (AUA) mission in Japan in the 1880s, they had proceeded in “a very ambiguous, and yet strategically-savvy way, by maintaining open-ended doctrinal positions.” This approach was visibly echoed in the construction of Unity Hall, the main hall of which (and you can see a picture of that at the end of this post) contained pictures of Jesus, Śākyamuni, Confucius and Socrates, and a pulpit whose outer shape was that of a torii, and which also displayed two crosses and three lotus petals. However, in time, due to some complex and convoluted Japanese social and political circumstances, as well as the conflict developing between the views of Kanda and Saji, Clay MacCauley (the AUA’s representative in Japan) came down of the side of the Christanity-centred model espoused by Kanda and the AUA itself. Alas, this ensured that the Japanese Unitarian movement in its institutional form began to adopt a more conservative stance that was very different from the tolerant position advocated in the early stages of the Unitarian presence in Japan. As Mohr points out, a direct result of this new policy was that in December 1911 MacCauley renamed the two pillars of the Japanese organisation “The Unitarian Christian Association” and “The Unitarian Christian Church,” choosing to privilege the “Christian” nuance and thus actively excluded Buddhist sympathisers.
Now, I highly recommend reading Mohr’s and Williams’ books to help you properly unpick this complex story, and I’m not going to attempt to do that here. All I want to do is alert you to is the fact of this important split that played a major part in the eventual dissolution of the Japanese movement in 1922.
Now, thankfully — from my Universalist perspective anyway! — when Imaoka Shin’ichirō revived a Japanese movement in 1948 (the Tokyo Kiitsu Kyōkai) the universalist, inclusive tendency of the Unitarian movement was the strand which came through to our own time in the form of Imaoka-sensei’s concept of free-religion. And, if you want to know more about those ideas then head over to my blog by clicking on this link.
But, all the while I was working through the books by Mohr and Williams, I found myself desperately wanting to read something actually written by Kanda and Saji to get a better idea of their different approaches expressed in their own words. Well, I eventually tracked down two texts published by them, both in 1895, that have helped me better understand their differences, and I put links to draft English translations of them below (links to the original Japanese text are included). If you choose to read them, please, please remember these are very much rough, draft translations that will be full of little mistakes here and there — and, perhaps, a number of real howlers — but I’m confident enough in their overall quality to put them out in the world in the hope that, one day, someone truly competent can make the necessary corrections. I simply hope to inspire another generation to dive into this fascinating period of Unitarian history — a period from which I think we can still learn much today.
And, lastly, don’t forget that Kanda Saichirō’s essay, “Three Standards of Unitarian Teaching” represents something of the Christian Unitarian position; and Saji Jitsunen’s “Record of Religious Lectures” represents something of the Buddhist Unitarian position.
 |
| The Hall in which Saji Jitsunen’s “Record of Religious Lectures” were given |
Comments